A little theorycrafting here, which attributes should a Monk focus on from a pure DPS perspective?

Obviously in the case of Dexterity there are other effects to consider on the whole, such as the added chance to dodge and the effects that could be provided by passive skills in relations to that, but what about things like...

Additional Critical hit chance

Additional Critical hit damage

+Damage

+Elemental Damage

+Attack Speed

Et cetera, Et cetera, basically looking for a hierarchy of skills that should be considered if one is trying to purely increase their damage.

I'm pretty sure the Damage stat takes all that into account. Just go with whatever that says.
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user9983May 21 '12 at 21:47

I'm not convinced that this question is particularly useful once you understand the answer to this question. The short version is: They're all good, take the one that you can get the most of. The only notable exception is if you're concerned about resource conservation (which deprecates attack speed), triggering more on-hit effects such as life leech (which increases it's value), or have a passive skill that triggers on crits.
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LessPop_MoreFizz♦May 22 '12 at 20:00

@LessPop_MoreFizz Since the monk resource is generated by attacking, attack speed is not deprecated by resource costs, with the exception of Seven-Sided Strike, where the resource is a cooldown.
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Theodore MurdockJun 6 '12 at 13:56

4 Answers
4

From the standpoint of your weapon: Weapon Damage is king. Above all else, you want the highest possible amount of raw damage and DPS possible. Beyond that, you'll want to take a look at this formula to understand the value of other stats.

In short: at low levels, nothing is going to beat raw +Damage on any slot where you can get it (Rings, Neck, Offhand). As you increase in level, you'll eventually reach a point of inflection where the multiplicative scaling gained from adding +Dex is more valuable than the straight + Damage. This point of inflection will vary with other stats, and particularly with the base DPS of your weapon - your best bet is to simply keep an eye on the +Damage portion of the tooltip when comparing items.

As for stats like Crit and Attack Speed, the same basic rules apply. In general, .1 attack speed is worth 10 Dex, but this ignores the defensive benefits of Dexterity, and since attack speed bonuses are provided as percentage multipliers, you'll need to do some math. You'll need to run similar calculations with +Crit and +Crit Damage, but in general, unless you use skills or passives that rely on Crit, you can assume those stats are less valuable than the others.

Really, all of this comes back to one key point: Trust the Damage Stat on your Character Sheet. So long as you're doing the basics right (using a level appropriate, high DPS weapon), it isn't going to steer you far wrong. Beyond that, Dexterity is King, and everything else depends entirely on the magnitude of the stat that you get. An item with +Crit might be better than an item with +Attack Speed, based purely on how much of it is there.

You've been given some obvious answers: things to prioritize are pure DPS on your weapons and dexterity (in that order).

The next priority is absolutely based on your build but I think attack speed should be the next priority since monk is based on spirit and more spirit regeneration due to higher attack speed means more spells which either translates into more damage or more health, again, depending on your build.

High spirit regeneration also works particularly well with gain x life per spirit spent abilities and gear. Let's say you gain 70 life per spirit spent and you have 150 spirit. That's 10500 health regenerated and you can generate a full spirit pool every couple of seconds, making this the best heal our class has. It actually scales with stats you can improve.